Al, I have a Hill Rom Advance 1135 hospital bed with an "air mattress". I put the "air mattress" in quotes, because it is actually much more sophisticated than that. It appears to have one or more foam layers of unknown density. There is a pump that keeps the mattress appropriately inflated.
There are two settings for the mattress' pressure. One allows the user to inflate or deflate the mattress to a desired level. The other setting allows the bed to automatically adjust the mattress' inflation to reduce the likelihood of pressure sores.
The bed has power functions to raise the head, raise the knees, and elevate the entire bed, as well as to put the bed into trendelenburg and reverse trendelenburg positions. When raising the head, it automatically raises the knees, which takes a lot of pressure off of my tailbone and makes sitting in the bed much more comfortable.
I love my hospital bed, though I really hate the thought of needing it.
The way I acquired it is pretty interesting. As you know, I love to go to Yellowstone to watch the wildlife as well as the geysers. There is a very active community of serious geyser gazers that frequent the park. Over the years we became friends with a woman who had recently lost her husband to ALS. She is a serious geyser gazer and her PALS was a leader in the geyser gazer community. It turns out that she lives about 100 miles away from us.
When her husband had passed, she had donated the hospital bed to the local ALS Association. Getting it out of her house was too hard, so they essentially left it there as a convenient place to store it. After a few years, she was ready to get the hospital bed out of there!
While we were in Yellowstone, she approached me and asked if I had considered getting a hospital bed. In fact, I had been thinking about it for a year. I knew exactly what I wanted and the bed she had was a near-perfect match for my desires.
She coordinated with the ALSA (who officially owned it, even though it was still at her house), who gave their blessing for the bed to go to me. We paid to move it out of her house transport it to our house and have it moved into our house. That move cost as much as a refurbished Hill Rom Advance 1135 would cost (before shipping, etc.).
The timing was great and I have enjoyed the bed tremendously. We did have one failure when a connector on an air line broke. I was able to source a replacement and get it installed for a modest cost.
Steve
